For decades, California police chiefs and sheriffs have lamented how difficult it is to fire officers and deputies who act with dishonesty or brutality, blaming powerful labor unions and robust employment protections.

What law enforcement leaders have not revealed, and what has remained a secret until now, is how they have repeatedly turned to an under-the-radar method of getting rid of problem officers — one that not only allows the officers to avoid accountability but, often, to quietly move on to other jobs where they are asked to protect the public.

For years, dozens of California police agencies have executed “clean-record agreements,” clandestine legal settlements that promise to hide the wrongdoing of an officer in exchange for the officer’s guarantee to leave an agency without a fight, an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program found.

The group that successfully sued Harvard to end affirmative action in university admissions last year is now threatening to investigate whether schools are complying with the new rules and to file lawsuits if it believes that they are not.

The group, Students for Fair Admissions, has focused on three universities — Princeton, Yale and Duke — where there were notable declines in Asian American enrollment this year compared with the last year, which the group said defied expectations.

On Tuesday, Students for Fair Admissions sent letters to the schools questioning whether they were complying with the rules laid out by the Supreme Court. Princeton, Duke and Yale also saw minor differences in Black and Hispanic enrollment in the first class of students admitted since the court struck down race-conscious admissions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A longtime CIA officer who drugged, photographed and sexually assaulted more than two dozen women in postings around the world was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Wednesday after an emotional hearing in which victims described being deceived by a man who appeared kind, educated and part of an agency “that is supposed to protect the world from evil.”

Brian Jeffrey Raymond, with a graying beard and orange prison jumpsuit, sat dejectedly as he heard his punishment for one of the most egregious misconduct cases in the CIA’s history. It was chronicled in his own library of more than 500 images that showed him in some cases straddling and groping his nude, unconscious victims.

“It’s safe to say he’s a sexual predator,” U.S. Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said in imposing the full sentence prosecutors had requested. “You are going to have a period of time to think about this.”

Eli Collins, a vice president of product management at Google DeepMind, first demoed generative AI video tools for the company’s board of directors back in 2022. Despite the model’s slow speed, pricey cost to operate, and sometimes off-kilter outputs, he says it was an eye-opening moment for them to see fresh video clips generated from a random prompt.

Now, just a few years later, Google has announced plans for a tool inside of the YouTube app that will allow anyone to generate AI video clips, using the company’s Veo model, and directly post them as part of YouTube Shorts. “Looking forward to 2025, we're going to let users create stand-alone video clips and shorts,” says Sarah Ali, a senior director of product management at YouTube. “They're going to be able to generate six-second videos from an open text prompt.” Ali says the update could help creators hunting for footage to fill out a video or trying to envision something fantastical. She is adamant that the Veo AI tool is not meant to replace creativity, but augment it.

Snapchat is reserving the right to put its users’ faces in ads, according to terms of service related to its “My Selfie” tool (formerly “AI Selfies”), which allows users and their friends to create AI-generated images trained on their selfies. 

Users have the option to opt out of this by toggling off a “feature” in the app called “See My Selfie in Ads,” but according to 404 Media’s testing this feature is on by default.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed three bills Tuesday to crack down on the use of artificial intelligence to create false images or videos in political ads ahead of the 2024 election. 

A new law, set to take effect immediately, makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes related to elections 120 days before Election Day and 60 days thereafter. It also allows courts to stop distribution of the materials and impose civil penalties. 

“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation -– especially in today’s fraught political climate,” Newsom said in a statement. “These measures will help to combat the harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content, one of several areas in which the state is being proactive to foster transparent and trustworthy AI.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed three bills Tuesday to crack down on the use of artificial intelligence to create false images or videos in political ads ahead of the 2024 election. 

A new law, set to take effect immediately, makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes related to elections 120 days before Election Day and 60 days thereafter. It also allows courts to stop distribution of the materials and impose civil penalties. 

“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation -– especially in today’s fraught political climate,” Newsom said in a statement. “These measures will help to combat the harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content, one of several areas in which the state is being proactive to foster transparent and trustworthy AI.”

The Secret Service has launched a probe into an X post by Elon Musk in which he tweeted that “no one is even trying” to kill Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.

The tech billionaire deleted the post on his X platform and passed it off as a “joke.” However, the White House did not find it funny and instead called it “irresponsible.”

“Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” the White House said in a statement. Now the Secret Service is involved.

The first thing people saw when they searched Google for the artist Hieronymus Bosch was an AI-generated version of his Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the most famous paintings in art history.

Depending on what they are searching for, Google Search sometimes serves users a series of images above the list of links they usually see in results. As first spotted by a user on Twitter, when people searched for “Hieronymus Bosch” on Google, it included a couple of images from the real painting, but the first and largest image they saw was an AI-generated version of it.

New York City on Tuesday reached a $175,000 settlement with a Staten Island police officer who said he had been a victim of retaliation for giving traffic tickets to people with connections to the upper echelons of the Police Department.

The officer, Mathew Bianchi, filed a lawsuit against the city last May. The suit said that he had been transferred out of his precinct’s traffic unit after Jeffrey Maddrey, then the chief of patrol and now the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, asked that he be punished. Officer Bianchi had issued a ticket to a woman with whom Chief Maddrey was said to be friends, according to the suit.

“This settlement is a vindication for our client, allowing him to close this chapter and continue his service with the N.Y.P.D.,” John Scola, Officer Bianchi’s lawyer, said on Tuesday. “We hope that Officer Bianchi’s courage and this decisive outcome will inspire other officers to come forward as whistle-blowers.”

Ohio state police will conduct daily sweeps of schools in Springfieldafter authorities have been forced to investigate “at least 33” bomb threats that led to evacuations and temporary building closures, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday.

“We want to make sure, as school continues this week in Springfield, that parents have confidence that the school is in fact safe,” the Republican governor said at a press conference.

Each bomb threat has been a hoax without “any validity at all,” DeWine said.

Sean Combs, known as Diddy, was arrested on Monday, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.

Diddy's attorney, Marc Agnifilo, issued a statement saying, "We are disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution of Mr. Combs by the U.S. Attorney’s Office."